Many consumers like to evaluate and experiment with digital cameras prior to purchase. Typically, digital cameras are available for evaluation in most major retail stores (e.g., consumer electronic stores, office superstores, wholesale warehouse clubs and other retail outlets) at what is commonly known as a “retail bar.” The retail bar displays many different digital camera models from numerous manufacturers providing an opportunity for consumers to quickly assess and choose from the varied assortment. Consumers evaluate digital camera features at the retail bar which may include the digital camera controls, size, weight, color, user interface, picture taking ability and image quality. It is important to enable most, if not all, of the digital camera features at the retail bar in order to provide consumers the ability to fairly assess the digital camera. Most importantly, having a digital camera take a picture at the retail bar should be straightforward, easy and pleasurable for the consumer.
Theft at the retail bar is not uncommon, especially for components not physically attached to the retail bar or digital camera. As such, a removable memory card is generally not inserted into the digital camera at the retail bar. A digital camera without a removable memory card has only limited capacity for storing pictures in the digital camera's internal memory. Likewise, when the digital camera is purchased, a removable memory card is typically not included in the box at the time of camera shipment and must be purchased separately. In most cases, only a few to several dozen pictures or short videos can be captured and stored in the digital camera internal memory. Therefore, the digital camera's internal memory can easily become filled with pictures or videos rendering the picture taking ability of the digital camera to become unavailable until the images are removed from the digital camera either by deletion or moving the images to a computer. For the camera purchaser, this behavior is not objectionable. However, in the retail environment, this behavior is frustrating for consumers when they are evaluating digital cameras and are continually encountering a “memory full” message on the digital camera LCD because of previous consumer evaluations. Consumers are often unable or unwilling to invest the time to clear the digital camera internal memory in order to enable further picture taking.
The principle shortcoming in the above interaction at the retail bar is that the digital camera internal memory becomes filled and prohibits subsequent consumers from readily taking pictures or videos to evaluate the digital camera's features and performance. Requiring consumers to explore the digital camera's user interface in order to determine how to delete images prior to capturing their own evaluation images is not a good consumer experience.
Some recent digital cameras eliminate the possibility of a “memory full” message at the retail bar by either deleting all images stored in internal memory at camera power on/off or simply not saving any captured images in the digital camera's internal memory. However, these two solutions have two drawbacks: (1) pictures that a digital camera purchaser potentially wants to keep are automatically deleted from internal memory and (2) consumers can not experience the digital camera's review functionality if no pictures are ever stored in the digital camera's internal memory. Notably, the KODAK PLAYTOUCH Video Camera, Model Zi10 automatically deletes pictures in the digital camera's internal memory when the internal memory becomes full and the user initiates capture of a new still or video image.
There remains a need for a convenient method to prevent a “memory full” message at the retail bar by automatically deleting pictures from the digital camera internal memory while allowing the digital camera purchaser the opportunity to save captured images without requiring a removable memory card.